Don't get me wrong, we are going to save the world, I just don't expect it to be much of a smooth progression of niceness following us around as much as a sudden relief of epic proportions and then the world continues to be crappy only slightly less. And then of course we continue. Having no hope of ever succeeding won't stop me.

Whatever keeps you going, I guess. Personally if I didn't feel like I could make the world a nicer place by trying I'd have trouble ever getting out of bed.

Hmm, I might not have been very clear on what I meant? It's not exactly that I can't make the world a better place, it's more like two things: 1. I expect the world to get crappier faster than I can make it nicer and 2. I've lived in a world that's been getting progressively worse since I was born, I don't have the luxury of letting myself believe otherwise lest it make me sloppy or content. It's too easy to convince myself I'm doing enough, a state of perpetual despair helps me stay grounded even if it's not justified.

Ah. Yeah, I find despair highly anti-motivating. I keep myself going with the knowledge that the world may be a terrible place so far, but I have not yet put my best effort into changing that.

Well, to each their own coping and motivational mechanism I suppose :P

Yes.

Patrol patrol.

The way Echo moves on patrol is a combination of incredibly skilled parkour and using a grappling hook, swinging this way and that like a certain spider-themed superhero from 60s comics. In spite of not being a flier, she's actually much more mobile than Sokoreth, and can reasonably keep up with Lance when Lance's not trying very hard.

Lance isn't in a particular hurry at the moment, but she does like to fly. Translucent green-gold plate mail covers her costume, and translucent green-gold wings sprout from her shoulders, allowing her to soar through the air above her teammates.

"I can learn! I'll fill out as many forms as it takes!"

"I could try to teach you, then. It took a long time to get mine, I had to convince everyone I was much more effective with it."

"I will be the best student you could dream of."

She giggles. "If you learn that as fast as you learned how to speak English, I'm sure!"

"I learn fast when highly motivated!"

She giggles.

"And the way you get around with that thing is highly motivating."

"It's lots of fun! I was inspired by this old comics superhero—before there were actual superheroes those used to be a thing about fictional ones."

"Well, now I'm intrigued."

"Well, in the comics superheroes would get powers for like all these weird reasons, like this one was called spiderman and he got bit by a mutant spider that gave him super-agility and super-strength and super-senses and a bit of danger precognition, and he was also super smart so he made these super spider web shooters on his wrists which he activated like so, and they'd shoot spider webs which he'd use to swing from building to building."

"Sounds like tremendous fun."

"That's why I got this! He could also climb walls because his fingers had super sticky spider hairs or something, so I learned how to parkour and how to use the grappling hook and now I'm spider girl, but Branding didn't let me be spider girl so I'm just Echo."